Hof Dor, Israel -- An archaeologist's dog may have discovered the first ship ever found from the period of King David and his son, Solomon, who ruled the holy land 3, 000 ago.

The remains, which have been carbon-dated to the ninth century B.C., include a huge stone anchor believed to be the largest ever unearthed. The wreckage is lying under a few inches of sand off the Mediterranean coast in shallow waters, and has yet to be examined extensively.

If the remains are indeed 3,000 years old, it would be the first archaeological artifact ever found from the era of the first kings of Israel, with the possible exception of several huge stones at the base of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The discovery was made by a dog, according to marine archaeologist Kurt Raveh.

"My dog Petal led me to an enormous stone anchor -- the biggest in the world," said Raveh. "He was swimming, started to drown, and was suddenly standing above the water. We couldn't understand how, so we went to check what he was standing on, and out of the sands came an enormous stone anchor."

Raveh, who has studied more than 200 stone anchors, said he discovered the huge anchor -- 8.2 feet long, almost 6.5 feet wide and 1.6 feet thick during the summer near his home in Hof Dor, about 25 miles north of Tel Aviv.

Named for Dorus, son of the Greek sea god Poseidon, the hillside city was a major port for both conquerors and traders and is mentioned in the first Book of Kings. At its peak, the port had 200,000 residents.

In the past 30 years, Raveh has discovered 23 shipwrecks spanning more than 15 centuries off Hof Dor's natural harbor, including vessels made by the Canaanites, Byzantines, Persians, Mamaluks and French. His past discoveries include ancient coins, a gold cup, Crusader swords and cannons ditched by Napoleon to make room for horses so he could move his sick and wounded soldiers.

"In King Solomon's time, this was the major port for the Israelite kingdom," said ancient boat specialist Yaacov Kahanov of Haifa University. "The island here off the coast is still called Taphath, after Solomon's daughter."

Raveh also excavated the world-famous 27-foot by 7 1/2-foot "Jesus boat" discovered in 1986 by two fishermen on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where the Bible says Jesus walked on water. Archaeologists carbon-dated that vessel to the first century and believe it may have sunk in fighting between Jews and Romans.

On Tuesday, Raveh said he found the anchor and wooden beams that appear to be the King David-era boat's keel as he probed the shallow waters.

"I took a little piece of wood and sent it to laboratories in Switzerland. This week we got it back, and it turned out to be from the time of David and Solomon, 3,000 years old," he said.

The carbon-14 test from the Institute for Particle Physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich dated the wood between 997 and 806 B. C. That would overlap with the rule of the ancient House of David, which governed the first united kingdom of Israel from 1,000 to 925 B.C.

This week, Raveh and a team from nearby Haifa University led by Kahanov will try to uncover the vessel for the first time in three millennia.

"Now we want to know if the wood is just beams or there is also a shipwreck from the time of King Solomon," Raveh said.

The team will also examine two Byzantine shipwrecks lying about 54 yards off shore. So far, they have pulled up dozens of coins, pieces of pottery and glass vessels that went down with the two ships, which have been dated to the 5th and 7th centuries A.D.

The archaeologists believe many more wrecks are buried inland, where the harbor once extended.